


The Happiest Place On Earth

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [75]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Fluff, Horror, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dinner at Disneyland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happiest Place On Earth

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series. This was written in response to a challenge, though the challenger probably doesn't remember issuing it and I'm not absolutely positive I'm remembering who the challenger was right. But there's a pretty good chance that this is all Soundingsea's fault. Or maybe Kita's, since it was her journal.

It's all new around here. All these hotels along Katella and Harbor Boulevard? Built in the Eighties, when the Disney people were buying up land all around the park. Boring. No personality. Used to be a lot of little two-story motels along here, built back in the Fifties, with all these different themes: a Western motel, a South Seas motel, a Space Age motel--tiki torches and hedges trimmed into the shape of spaceships and all that shit. It was kitschy as hell. Loved it.

All gone now. The only one left from that era is the Travelodge on Katella and Jacalene, and it's been renovated out the ass. Still, I go down there for old times' sake. There's a Denny's right next door. I can't remember when it went in--after a few decades it all begins to blur together, you know? But it's a hot spot for people who want a meal that's better and cheaper than the crap they serve inside the park.

I get a corner booth where I can nurse a cup of coffee and people-watch. It's the off-season, and it's late--the park closed an hour ago and the crowds are starting to thin. About time for me to order dinner. There's three blue-haired old ladies in tennis shoes and various flavors of rhinestone-studded "Super Grandma" sweatshirts in the booth nearest me, carefully perusing the senior menu and weighing the merits of country-fried steak over fish and chips. Old, tough, and stringy. That's a last resort. Across the aisle there's a pale, skinny, intense guy in slicked-back hair and a leather jacket talking earnestly about Keats to his girlfriend. She's a hottie. There's a possibility.

There's a whole family in the big booth over in the corner opposite. Mom, Dad, and two point five kids. There's a boy about eight, a girl about five, and Point Five looks like it's due to make an entrance in another month or two. Mom and Dad shoot the occasional mildly envious glance over at Leather Jacket and his squeeze--ten years ago they were the ones in the romantic little booth, with their entire lives ahead of them. Now Girl is drawing pictures in ketchup on the table with her french fries, and Boy is tugging on Dad's sleeve with the hyperactivity of the exhausted kid and pleading to go to Sea World tomorrow, please, please, pleeeease, and Dad's squinting at the menu through reading glasses while Mom frets about whether she's put on a few too many baby pounds to justify the cheesecake.

I feel sorry for them, so I decide they're the ones I'm going to take to dinner. I've been there, you know? Realizing at forty that your life's turned into exactly the mundane, soul-destroying rut that you swore it never would when you were twenty--heh, well, I don't have to worry about the soul-destroying part any longer, do I? But in a way, I'll be doing these guys a favor. No matter how meaningless their lives are, their deaths will be...spectacular.

When they get up to leave I wait a few minutes before following them. I toss a ten on the table as I go, brush past Leather Jacket, past the Rhinestone Brigade, and out the front doors. The objects of my charity haven't gone far; they're standing in a little huddle waiting to cross Jacalene. Mom's tiny and glowing, pretty enough to turn heads even with a tummy out to there. Dad's wiry and bookish, with short-cropped nondescript sandy hair. He's talking into a cell phone. "...last time, we're on vacation. Handle it, or I _will_ come home, and someone will be missing essential body parts shortly thereafter. Understood?"

"Is it serious?" Mom asks as he hangs up and the light changes.

"No. Fucking idiots." I'm betting he's a Dilbert, but he works out. Not as often as he'd like anymore, judging by the tiny hint of a gut settling in over his belt buckle.

"Daddy said fuck again!" Girl crows. "Daddy said fuck, Daddy said fuck, Daddy said--"

"Doesn't mean you get to say it," Daddy growls, snatching her up by the ankles and dangling her upside down as they cross the street. She shrieks and giggles and I revise my estimate of how often he works out.

"Sweetie, put her down, or we'll never get her to sleep tonight," Mom says, and Dad complies. He puts an arm around her, hand resting on her baby-plump backside.

"Is the baby going to be like me, or like Billy?" Girl demands.

"We don't know yet, pumpkin." Her mother ruffles her glossy brown curls.

"I want it to be like me. So we outnumber you," Girl says with a scowl in her brother's direction.

"Make her stop calling me Billy! That's a baby name, and she's the baby!"

Her brother does something I can't see from the rear, and Girl shrieks again, in outrage rather than glee.

Dad thumps Billy on the back of the head and says, "You keep making that face and someday it'll freeze that way."

As they turn into the Travelodge driveway Mom looks back. I get a flash of big luminous eyes, and her hand rests for a second on her husband's arm. He looks back, too, but there's no way he can see me in the shadows. A lot of times it's the mothers who realize something's wrong. Funny, huh? Free of the overwhelming fried-grease smell of the restaurant, I catch a good whiff of her for the first time, and it's like ambrosia, the rich mingling of her blood and the baby's. There's nothing as tasty as a near-term bun ripped fresh and hot from the oven. This is gonna be sweet.

I follow them down to the far end of the hotel. Looks like they've got a room on the very end of the second floor. Couldn't be more perfect. I can hear a low moan and a shuffle behind me--Leather Jacket and his girlfriend, making out against one of the cars in the parking lot. Ah, young love. Though the older variety has its charms--Mom looks up at the staircase to the second floor in very pregnant dismay, and Dad sweeps her up as easily as he did Girl, and carries her up while the kids race on ahead.

I loiter at the foot of the stairs till I see the light go on in their room, and then I head on up. I stand outside the door and listen: a jumble of movement, breathing, heartbeats, of "Connie, brush your teeth before you get into bed," and "We are not going to Sea World, we're going to see your grandfather, and that's final!"

I knock on the door. There's silence for a moment, and then Dad opens it. I put on my friendliest smile. "Hi. I'm from hotel maintenance. Sorry to disturb you this late, but there's been a report of a leak in the bathroom of the room below yours, and--"

Dad swings the door open wide. "Come on in." He turns to his wife, who's sitting barefoot on the bed against a mound of pillows, hands splayed over the luscious curve of her belly. "Look who's here--hotel maintenance."

"So it is," she says, and there's something strangely calculating in her gaze. She smiles at her husband. "When you're done with him, hon, do you think you could give me a foot rub? My toes feel like balloon animals."

"Sure thing, pet." Warning bells go off in my head as I hear the door close behind me. I whirl, but Dad's already blocking the exit. "You may as well relax," he says to me. "This is going to take a while." His hand shoots out so fast even my eyes can barely follow it. I go game-faced, but he seizes me by the throat and grabs my right arm with his free hand. His fingers close around my scream as he dislocates first one shoulder, then the other, and finishes off with a kick which shatters one kneecap. His wife watches with cool, analytical approval as he dumps me onto the floor. I realize that although his heart is beating, it's far too slow to power any human body, and the hand which pulls my head to one side is almost as cold as my own.

"What the hell are you?" I croak.

Dad just grins as he crushes my windpipe. "When I figure it out, mate, you'll be the first to know. Constance, Bill, get out here."

The children emerge from the adjoining room. Constance goes to her mother and clings to her, watching me with wide-eyed distrust. Bill's face lights up when he sees me, with the avid joy of a kid recognizing the shape of a Red Rider air rifle under the tree. He looks up at his father, eyes shining. "Really, Dad? I can really bite him?"

"'bout time you learned, innit?" Dad drops to a feline crouch beside me. His eyes flush with gold, his forehead goes ridged, and his canines lengthen into fangs. "Now remember, these are moves you use in a fight for your life. I catch you snacking, I'll give you a hiding that'll last for a week."

Bill nods violently, his small pearly fangs all but bursting out of his mouth in his excitement. I flail towards the door, moaning, and Dad pats his son on the shoulder. "Go get him."

"Oh, Dad! This is WAY better than Sea World!" Bill smothers his father in a joyful, impulsive hug and pounces on me. Eager young hands maul my face and tiny sharp teeth rip at my flesh.

Dad's got a hint of proud tears in his eyes as he murmurs, "That's good, but you've missed the artery. Bit to the left. If he were human you'd have a hell of a mess."

Over by the bed, Connie's sweet pink lip sticks out in a pout. "It's not fair that Billy can make bitey faces and I can't!"

"There, there, honey," her mother says, smoothing her hair. She reaches into her purse and removes a long, sharp length of ash wood, and hands it to her daughter. "You'll get your turn in just a minute."

END

**Author's Note:**

> The challenge, more or less, was to write schmoopy Spuffy baby/pregnancy fic with Buffy getting footrubs which did not make the challenger barf. (So far, no barfing.) This is the first story I wrote about the kids - I was still in the the middle of plotting POM, and while I was writing this, I was still waffling over whether to take the plunge and make it an official part of the 'verse or not, because everyone hates kidfic, right? But it was well-received enough that I threw caution to the winds and went there.


End file.
